Asante Samuel joined the Falcons, in part, so he could be nearer to his ailing mother. (Here's a good piece on the bond between the two.) Christine Samuel died on Tuesday, and with the Falcons on a bye, Asante has been away from the team all week.

The news came out today, and AJC.com has a brief story. It's accompanied by a poor choice of a picture. I get that the overworked and underpaid web editor only has a certain number of in-house photos to choose from (Getty and the AP have much more appropriate ones, so perhaps the paper is trying to keep under its monthly limit), but they went with one that's not even particularly recent. At the very least, maybe they could have picked one where Samuel looks less... jubilant?